All: How powerful do you think T.S. (Total Soak) is compared to defensive maneuvers such as Block, Dodge, and Parry? Since armor doesn't drop your ability to dance out of the way, total soak seems VERY important for all characters to pile on as much armor as possible. Pick up a mule/horse or a porter and forget the equipment.

Shouldn't an unarmored character have an advantage against an armored character in regards to being hit? Any thoughts on dice modifiers?

jh

This is one of those "RPG game balance" meets "simulation" issues.

People wore armour for a reason, not an aesthetic choice so it should make sense that armour makes you better resist damage. The solution for low-armour value is likely mostly to get an armoured PC to be meat-shield.

Otherwise, suspension of disbelief has to accept that the high damage monster and the dwarf ironbreaker naturally go for each other, while the goblin goes for the envoy. This is why you hope the Soldier in group takes My Life for Yours and the dwarf the Saga of Grungi.

Not a perfect solution, I admit to thinking that one thing a GM needs to do is have an eye on soak values of PC's and damage output of monsters to keep them "interesting" (e.g, it's not minimum damage all the time due to high soak) but a high disparity in soak values can mean if wrong character gets in front of monster... ouch! Then again, gritty dangerous world.

Rob

One thing of note:

Total soak is important, but it only comes into play once you are hit, and at that point you are taking 1 wound minimum.

Dodge, block etc can prevent you being hit in the first place and hence 0 wounds.

A requirement of dodge is to not be encumbered too, so for low strength characters there is a choice to be made between heavy high soak armour, and probably not using dodge, or choosing low soak low encumbrance armour and using dodge and hoping thats enough to prevent them being hit at all.

Theres a tactical choice there between being the lumbering heavily armoured oaf who takes a small number of wounds each round and the highly mobile combatant that relies on not being hit becuase when there are, it will hurt.